Chairs. Not professionally diagnosed, but I'm convinced that I have a chair disorder. They follow me home and fill my space like mewing kittens. Thirteen kitchen chairs, four armchairs, two rockers and a couch. Not to mention all the chairs I've resold when I recognized things spiralling back out of control. Again.

I like my 1970's chrome, brown, yellow and orange floral chairs. They're delightfully outrageous. My chippy white wooden pressback chair. The turquoise chrome baby highchair with the glittering sparkles. (That's not going anywhere.) And the yellow highchair with partially destroyed decal. I have a serious fondness for old decals.

The golden thrifted armchair is perfect for reading, petting the cat, laying the dog across my lap, and because there's a chippy cupboard right beside it, I can also have my coffee within arms reach.

Book, cat, dog, coffee. No need to pontificate.

Behind that, kind of tucked against the wall, is my orange and black retro, crazy chair, a gift from a friend whose husband forbid her to make it part of their household. A tragic story really, but I'm glad to have benefitted from his lack of fen shui insight.

The patterned turquoise chairs were a major score, found while yard sale-ing in Kleefeld. I don't think you need me to explain that any further.

Then there's the singular item we have actually spent money on. The big granddaddy rocking chair where Brian likes to sit and read books about the Camino de Santiago, or chat with chicks online all day under the auspices of playing words with friends. A few years ago we decided to properly fix and reupholster it to a tune of five hundred dollars. No regrets, although I do break into the tiniest cold sweat when the littles pretend its tinkertown in the winter, while typically armed with serrated plastic play dough knives and lost pens.

And then just last night, I had 15 minutes to fly through the thrift shop. It was long overdue, there just hasn't been any time for languishing in thrift shops because of the litany of short and long term mission projects I've recently signed up for (that's another post.) And there, under the strains of magical music that only I could hear, was another rocking chair, sort of a long lost cousin to our own pride and joy rocker. Wooden, with dowels, perfect for repainting chippy white with undertones of turquoise and green. (colors my house craves, constantly, without balance or regard for interior design publications). The chair of Great Potential was a whopping eight dollars, and it followed me home.

My chairs are like family to me, really.

Please don't tell me that my family is too big and that I need to abandon some of them. I'll be forced to unfriend you.

Toast. It's winter again on my side of town, so it's taking me a solid six cups of black coffee to get me to 10 AM most mornings. And when the littles start fighting over the White Chair and the Cup With The Purple Lid, I sometimes find that toast is nothing short of medicinal. Especially since pre-noon tequila shots are frowned upon when raising other people's offspring. I never have found an appropriate space to list that on my resume.

And toast naturally brings me to: Pee. It's Pee Week at Joycie's house. No, we are not potty training, that's been done. This week is just sort of a break from the traditional, middle class, suburban notion of peeing on toilets, so we are celebrating unexplored oppurtunites such as: furniture, the floor right in front of the toilet (upstairs) and the floor right in front of the toilet (downstairs), and finally- the carpet by the back door. Softer somehow that the cold linoleum right beside the carpet, and more convenient than the toilet, slightly to the right.

I've found myself craving toast this week. And six more cups of black coffee.

Particularly as I sit on the (now laundered) chair and stare at the billions and trillions of toys on the floor. To properly raise other people's kids, you have to fill your basement with this plastic stuff in the shape of tractors, graders, pink cups and forks, building blocks, transformers, and toy adding machines. Then to contain the sheer mass of it all, and intend to keep it all organized, you need toy bins. I like the medium sized, brightly colored plastic ones that are easy for the kids to tidy up with One for books, one for little cars, one for play food, etc.

So you and I see it like this: Bins are for toys.

Kids see this: Bins ARE Toys.

First task at hand at play time is to invert all the bins. Dump everything onto the carpet. Step on the toys and cry because they hurt the bottoms of bare feet, (socks are for shoving behind the couch cushions) Then line up all the bins behind the couch to use as tiny ladders to launch their volatile little selves up and over. Then the toy bins morph into portable beds for all the fuzzy care bear babies. Become ideal for packing lunches for pretend picnics. Get piled high with Little Ponies and John Deeres to play "Happy Birthday!" Or turn the bins upside down, cover them in a superman cape tablecloth and play tea party. Lure a little baby into a bin and push them around the basement. Bins also make great helmets, or weapons. Depending on your convictions.

I've considered getting bigger boxes so that we can store the toys and the bins in larger boxes, but I think we all know where that's headed: choo choo train and school bus.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

In Rattatouille, there's a scene where chef Rat tries to teach his more ratty brother how to put flavours together in more imaginative ways.

Then ever so briefly, the brother hears an visualizes a sort of flavour symphony forming in the air above hime until suddenly and abruptly-- POOF! its gone again.

Such is the tale of Joyce and her blog posts. The word symphonies begin, there are lovely little swirls and flashes and inspirational sort of background music. My fingers start to tingle, and I yearn for a few minutes to find my keyboard so I can let it all pour out of me. Until- Poof! Nope. It's gone again.

And that's why I haven't quite written about

How I Don't Even Know Who I Am Anymore: My Tiny Midlife Crisis, and

Watching My Dad Disappear, and

How I Re-Found My Sewing Machine, and

Life: How Lifelong Relationships Vaporize, and

Brunch With Karla, and

Raising Boys, and

My Body, The Ongoing Story, and

How I Made Peace With My Bread Machine, and

The Last Supper: Giving Up My Position on the Thrift Shop Board.

So maybe I actually don't even know why I am any more. Sure, I'd love to write about it, but it remains to be seen whether any swirly bits of inspiration will stick around long enough for finger to find keyboard. One can only hope.

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About Me

lives in her head, making the simplest things complex; is drawn to the oddest things, thinks in swirly and coloured bits, fears numbers,(the numerical variety, not the book) thinks Jesus had an excellent viewpoint, rarely remembers to de-hair or apply cosmetics, loves critters, and there's more. Much more.